The Labour leadership is in turmoil. One of my indoor plants is slightly wilted. I like jumping on trampolines.

I don’t vote – so perhaps this is a case of my ‘just not getting it’ – but days like today when everyone seems to be genuinely enthralled, concerned and excitably anxious about some internal conflict or power struggle within a major political party, I really do wonder, is all this enthralment, concern and anxious excitement because people really do genuinely believe that a significant part of thier own ‘self’ or selves (their preferences, views, values, opinions etc), is somehow vested in their representative leader?

Having grown up in Australia, I find this rather hard to believe – no one has faith in politicians and/or the parliamentary process – or have I missed something?

Last time this ‘leadership spill’ happened (2010 some time), I rushed to Parliament House to show my concern by rolly-polly’ing down the lawn atop Parliament House. However,  even that seems too much of an effort or over commitment this time around.

On account of thoughts ill-defined (and perhaps still admittedly storm-cloud heavy), words toward loved one’s  obituary must wait. Bäy-lakarama wäwa. Meantime, however, thank goodness for Arundhati Roy.

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.”

~ Arundhati Roy, from her speech entitled, ‘Come September.’

Reading #3, pp. 4-6

Ends bottom of page 6 @ ‘- but one could easily make a case that the only reason it [the US] insists on treating these payments as “loans” and not as “tribute” is precisely to deny the reality of what’s going on.’

Reading #2, pp. 3-4

Ends, bottom of section, p.4 @ ‘After all, they owed money, and surely one has to pay one’s debts.’

Dhuwala dhäwu ŋayi ŋonuŋ, mirrithirri

‘This story is weighted and heavy’

One of my closest Yolŋu brothers is dead. He was stabbed by a person unknown while visiting family in Darwin. According to all ‘as yet’ accounts his injuries were not immediately life threatening – he would have survived except the houses that he and his friend sought help at refused to open their doors – not one of them called an ambulance. Seeing or hearing that they were Indigenous, the white residents obviously assumed that they were drunk.

My brother was stabbed just after 9pm. He bled to death approximately three and a half hours later on the step of a nearby church. He was 61. He leaves behind an entire kin network in mourning back on the Homelands.

Fuck racism and fuck the colour blindness of politics in this Country.

I’ll be heading back up, returning home to Camp for the funeral ceremony, which (for various reasons) may not be(gin) for another month or two. I will post an obituary of some kind tomorrow. You can see my wäwa being his amazing an’ thoughtful self in one of the interview clips on the Video Series page.

Meantime wäwa this song is for you… marrkap-mirri ŋarra yukurra ŋathi nhuŋu...

I’m not sure I’ll cross-post all of the readings on here. In any case, this is the first reading.

Reading #1, pp. 1-3 (ends@ last sentence, first paragraph, p.3., ‘But there was a more basic problem: the very assumption that debts have to be repaid’).

I’ve decided to vlog a series of incremental book readings from David Graeber’s much discussed book, Debt The First 5000 Years. Each reading will be between five and six minutes long (and obviously in order, from the beginning of the book to the end).

Why vlog a book reading?

Why #1: Reading aloud to one another (even via the internet), is a joy and a lovely, productive past time. This is especially true if people may not have otherwise come across or read the book at hand. I was gifted a copy of this particular book by a friend and could think of nothing more fitting than to share  it.

Why #2: There is a rather a large pool of potential ‘reading aloud to’ friends on the internetz. There were 10.9 million internet subscribers in Australia at the end of June 2011. This online population watched a total of 961 million online videos last year – an average of 8 hours video per month. The age group of these viewers was between the 15-24 and 25-34 age bracket. While I think they should all read Graeber’s Debt (along with a long list of other texts), short of this, t’will be grand if one or two share in an online reading.

Any suggestions or advice on how best (or better) to vlog a book-reading series will be very much appreciated (there doesn’t seem to be many online). I’m actually really looking forward to it…

I HAVE (PAST TENSE) BANNED MYSELF FROM READING ANYMORE DURKHEIM UNTIL MARCH BUT I HAD A THOUGHT WHILE RUNNING ABOUT DURKHEIM, MORALITY & CRIMINALITY ETC. SO I’M JUST GOING TO QUICKLY SAY IT OUT ALOUD HERE OK;

WITH REFERENCE TO CHAPTER TWO IN ‘THE DIVISION OF LABOUR IN SOCIETY’ IN WHICH DURKHEIM IS AT PAINS TO SHOW HOW & WHY THERE EXISTS A DISPARITY BETWEEN;

‘CRIMES’ AS PER ‘IMMORALITY’ AS THEY AFFRONT THE ‘COLLECTIVE CONSCIENCE’ (I.E. SHARED UNDERSTANDINGS ABOUT WHAT IS RIGHT & WRONG IN A MORAL AFFECTIVE SENSE) – WHICH TYPICALLY ELICIT REPARATORY ACTION OR PUNISHMENT FROM PEOPLE WHO COMPRISE THAT COLLECTIVE, AMONG WHOM AUTHORITY/POWER IS DIFFUSED OR DISTRIBUTED, AND;

‘CRIMES’ AS PER ‘ILLEGALITY’[1] AS THEY AFFRONT’ THE ‘SOCIAL CONSCIENCE’ (I.E. WHAT IS RIGHT AND WRONG ACCORDING TO RULES, REGULATIONS & LAWS ETC) – WHICH TYPICALLY ELICIT REPARATORY ACTION OR PUNISHMENT FROM CENTRALISED, COLLECTIVE SOCIAL BODIES WITH A DISPROPORTIONATE AMOUNT OF AUTHORITY/POWER (add +OFTEN MONOPOLY OF ‘LEGITIMATE’ VIOLENCE).

SO WHAT I THOUGH WHILE RUNNING AT THE MOUNTAIN WAS;

ONE COULD USE SAME METHOD FOR IDENTIFYING ‘TYPICAL ELICITING SITUATIONS’ AS PER THE STUDY OF EMOTION – THAT IS, METHODS FOR IDENTIFYING SOCIAL SITUATIONS THAT TYPICALLY EVOKE OR ELICIT PARTICULAR EMOTIONAL RESPONSES (AS CATEGORISED OR LABELLED ACCORDING TO LOCAL TERMS AND CONCEPTS ETC) – TO IDENTIFY ‘TYPICAL ELICITING SITUATIONS FOR ‘CRIMES OF IMMORALITY’ ON THE ONE HAND & ‘CRIMES OF ILLEGALITY’ ON THE OTHER.

ONE COULD THEN COMPARE AND CONTRAST ‘TYPICAL ELICITING SITUATIONS’, WHICH WOULD ILLUMINATE THE DISPARITY DURKHEIM DRAWS ATTENTION TO HERE AS MANIFEST OR REFLECTED IN/AS AN ETHNOGRAPHIC CASE. BUT MORE INTERESTINGLY (I THINK) IS THE FACT THAT ONE COULD THEN BEGIN TO CRITICALLY EXAMINE THIS DISPARITY AS AN ETHNOGRAPHIC ENQUIRY – AND BEGIN ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT THE NATURE, REASON AND/OR JUSTIFICATION FOR SUCH A DISPARITY

FOR EXAMPLE ONE MIGHT FOCUS ON CERTAIN SALIENT ‘TYPICAL ELICITING SITUATIONS’ FOR ‘CRIMES OF ILLEGALITY’ THAT DO NOT CORRESPOND TO ‘CRIMES OF IMMORALITY’ – THAT IS – THOSE THAT MOST PEOPLE DO NOT FEEL ARE ‘WRONG’ IN A MORAL AFFECT SENSE BUT WHICH NEVERTHELESS TYPICALLY ELICIT OR EVOKE A PREDICTABLE & EMPIRICALLY OBSERVABLE RESPONSE OR PUNISHMENT FROM ‘THE LAW’ (HERE I’M THINKING SPECIFICALLY OF CASES IN CONTEMPORARY CAPITALIST STATE SYSTEMS);

WHAT MANDATE IF NOT THE COLLECTIVE CONSCIENCE? WHAT MOTIVATION IF NOT COLLECTIVE SENTIMENT? WHAT IS IT THAT ‘THE LAW’ IS PROTECTING IF NOT THE SOCIO-MORAL FABRIC, INTEGRITY & ORDER OF THAT SOCIETY?

MY HYPOTHESIS AS REGARDS THE NATURE, REASON AND/OR JUSTIFICATION FOR THIS DISPARITY (SPECIFIC W/ REGARD TO CONTEMPORARY CAPITALIST STATE SYSTEMS) WOULD BE SOMETHING ALONG THE LINES OF –   ‘C.A.P.I.T.A.L.’  - AND MORE GENERALLY, I WOULD GUESS, SOMETHING ALONG THE LINES OF – PRIVATE PROPERTY – PERHAPS I THINK

/END SPECULATIVE OUTBURST/

Yesterday evening, in the company of wonderful folk, question arose as to the origin of the term ‘radical’. This question arose in the context of a conversation about ‘just how few’ terms there are left nowadays, to describe or refer to (people with) radical politics. Terms like ‘liberal’, for example, or ‘progressive’ have either been appropriated by, or are now somehow associated with, people with conservative ideas or politics.

But what of ‘radical’? From whence did this term derive? Suggestions included 1) from the notion of ‘root’ as in ‘going to the root or core’ of something; 2) from ‘radish’ (“because I like radishes”), and; 3) from something with something to do with the idea of ‘radiate’. We were all near-ishly on the right track. None of us, however, were terribly pleased with what we found.

It just so happens that the term ‘radical’ is first recorded is use from the late 14c in a medieval philosophical sense, from Late Latin radicalis (‘of or having roots’), from Latin radix (‘root’), derived from late Old English rædic, from Latin radicem (‘root’), thought to be derived from the Proto-Indo-European base, wrad-  (‘twig, root’). (Trying very hard not to make joke about root in plural form.).

Of note was the fact that the term ‘radical’ was used in the 1650s to mean ‘going to the origin, essential’. The term was first used in a political sense in 1802… when it was used in the political sense of ‘reformist’ (via notion of ‘change from the roots’). Reformist!? Reformist.

“So can we still use the term – ‘radical’ I mean – would you still use it d’you think?” 

“Reformist!? Radical!?”

It was a fleetingly sad moment in an otherwise celebratory history of indulging in etymology. Thankfully we were all drinking beer so neither lingered, nor paused to reflect for very long.

Though I prefer a man with a beard, myself.

Negative Love

 

I never stoop’d so low, as they

Which on an eye, cheek, lip, can prey,

Seldom to them which soar no higher

Than virtue, or the mind to admire,

For sense and understanding may

Know what gives fuel to their fire:

My love, though silly, is more brave,

For may I miss, whene’er I crave,

If I know yet what I would have.

 

If that be simply perfectest,

Which can by no way be express’d

But negatives, my love is so.

To all, which all love, I say no.

If any who deciphers best,

What we know not, ourselves, can know,

Let him teach me that nothing; this

As yet my ease and comfort is,

Though I speed not, I cannot miss.

It’s quite beautiful really…